MONDAY, May 21 (HealthDay News) -- People with atherosclerosis, namely carotid atherosclerosis, are at an increased risk of developing dementia, compared with their counterparts who do not have atherosclerosis, according to the results of a prospective cohort study published in the May issue of the Annals of Neurology.
Marieke van Oijen, M.D., Ph.D., of Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues conducted a study to investigate the association between atherosclerosis and dementia using various non-invasive measures of atherosclerosis among 6,647 individuals.
During a mean follow-up of nine years, 678 participants developed dementia, including 476 diagnosed with Alzheimer disease. Participants in the highest quintile for carotid intima media thickness had a 50 percent increased risk of developing dementia, compared with those participants in the lowest quintile for carotid intima media thickness. The increased risk was evident during short follow-up, but it was reduced as the study went on, likely due to the increased risk of mortality seen in patients with atherosclerosis.
"The results provide important confirmatory evidence for a large opus of observational epidemiology that has, on the whole, repeatedly linked both risk factors for atherosclerosis and markers of atherosclerotic burden with various indicators of cognitive function and impairment," writes Jacob S. Elkins, M.D., of the University of California San Francisco, in an accompanying editorial.
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